Twenty-five years ago this month, British scientists announced their discovery of the ozone hole over Antarctica. That bolt from the blue spurred perhaps the best-coordinated international response to an environmental crisis to date. Now, scientists can’t help but wonder: Why didn’t the same thing happen with climate change?

Looking back on the ozone problem: Even before the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer—that blanket of three-oxygen “ozone” molecules that protect us from much of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation—researchers worried about pollutants destroying those highly reactive molecules. The British scientists’ 1985 announcement confirmed that daunting reality.

Technically a substantial thinning of the ozone layer, the ozone “hole” has been opening every spring since the 1970s, the scientists reported. Their data, collected at the Halley Research Station in Antarctica, suggested that CFCs were to blame. That’s because atmospheric conditions during the cold, dark, Antarctic winters were building stockpiles of CFCs over the South Pole [National Geographic].

But only two years later, in 1987, the United Nations approved the Montreal Protocol against the use of CFCs, and it took effect in 1989. Today the ozone hole still opens up—and it’s still large—because problematic pollutants like chlorine linger for decades. Thus, the ozone layer may not return to its former fullness until the late 21st century, but quick international action did stabilize the problem.

Given that success, the British scientists couldn’t help but look back on the anniversary of their discovery and ponder the vast difference between the global response to the ozone hole and the lingering hostility and uncertainty that keeps climate negotiations stuck in neutral. Writing in this week’s edition of the journal Nature (where the team published the original study in 1985), ozone hole co-discoverer Jonathan Shanklin notes that his find presented a clear danger, with clear solutions:

The public was keen to see action: the evidence was strong and clear; the hole sounded threatening; and there was a link between thinning ozone and cancer. And the public did not feel bullied or threatened — no one was telling them to radically change their way of life. There was a problem, and something could be done about it. By contrast, the evidence for man-made climate change is less clear-cut to the average person. And people are given the impression that civilization will collapse unless they abandon cars and radically change their lives in other difficult ways. Not surprisingly, there is confusion and resistance [Nature].

Joe Farman, another co-author of the original ozone paper, was much more candid in his assessment of climate science, given in an interview with the BBC this week.

He criticised politicians for failing to lead on issues like climate change – it was “damned stupid” to keep increasing emissions of CO2 when we know it is a warming gas, he said. But, in a nod to climate sceptics, he also blamed the scientific establishment for failing to take specific criticisms of detailed climate science seriously enough [BBC News].

Related Content:
DISCOVER: The Hole Story
80beats: Today’s Biggest Threat to the Ozone Layer: Laughing Gas
80beats: Ozone Hole + Global Warming = More Ice Here, Less Ice There

Image: NASA, the hole in 2009

We’ve been talking about life quite a bit here recently at Cosmic Variance, and it’s always fun to talk about areas in which one has absolutely no professional expertise. But it’s also fun to bring in experts, which is why we’re happy to welcome Caleb Scharf as a guest blogger. Caleb is Director of Astrobiology at Columbia University, author of a textbook on the subject, an recently jumped into blogging. In this post he reminds us that we’re still learning a lot about the forms of life right here on Earth — knowledge that will be invaluable as we search for it elsewhere.

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It’s a real privilege to be able to write a guest blog for Cosmic Variance and to take a little side trip from my regular postings to Life, Unbounded – the science of origins.

The modern search for life in the universe encompasses everything from exoplanets and astrochemistry to geophysics and paleontology. Underlying and motivating the investigations in these fields – collectively labeled astrobiology – there are some fundamental assumptions, but do they make sense?

In recent weeks one might be forgiven for thinking that a shadowy biosphere surrounds us, aliens are poised to dismantle civilization, and that time traveling species are flitting in and out of view like barflies on a Saturday night. It’s a little disconcerting, does the Kool Aid have something special in it this Spring?

Unfortunately I think that all of these headline grabbing items miss the real story of what life is, here on Earth and potentially further afield. The idea of ‘shadow biospheres’ or multiple origins of terrestrial life sounds intriguing, and certainly helps bring focus to the fact that we can be very blinkered in our outlook. It also steers attention away from a more interesting and demonstrably real point.

In the past couple of decades we have found a shadow biosphere, except that far from lurking in the cracks it turns out to be the biggest, most critical, biosphere on the planet. An astonishing 99.9% of life on Earth cannot be coerced to grow in a lab, and so we have overlooked it. Microbial life – single-celled bacteria and our ancient cousins the Archaea – is not just the stuff under your fingernails, it is what makes multi-cellular life like us function, and it helps govern the grand chemical cycles of our planet, from the continents to the oceans to the atmosphere. Such organisms have, over three to four billion years, evolved into an eye popping array of microscopic machines, the ultimate nano-bots. They can extract energy and raw materials from, it seems, almost any environment. A particularly good example is Desulforudis audaxviator – discovered 2.8 km down in a South African gold mine in a pocket of isolated water. Little audaxviator lives all alone when the vast majority of microbial life is utterly reliant on colonial symbiosis. It earns a living by mopping up the molecular detritus left after radioactive decay in the uranium rich rocks dissociates water and bicarbonates. That’s a very, very neat trick.

Twenty or thirty years ago we barely understood that such life existed on this planet. Now we are beginning to see that the longevity of our biosphere owes itself to precisely this crowd of ‘shadowy’ organisms. A truly wonderful paper was published a couple of years ago in which Falkowski, Fenchel and Delong laid out the big picture for life on Earth. In essence, they argue that single-celled microbial life is the manifestation of an even deeper truth; the core planetary gene set. This is the set of recipes for metabolism, or how to harvest a planet for energy, and we all rely on them. The result of billions of years of natural selection, these genes are widely dispersed across the microbial biosphere. This is true to such an extent that should 99% of life be wiped out by an asteroid collision, supervolcano, or dirty telephone receiver, the information for the molecular machinery that drives all organisms will be safely preserved in the surviving 1%. The living world does not end, it just reboots. Because of this, carbon-based life is a far more robust phenomenon than we could have ever imagined. It is the ultimate, Google-like, cloud computer.

Still though, isn’t this also a blinkered view of what might constitute life? Well, sure, but there’s another fact to consider. When we look out into the universe we find that the chemistry of our life – carbon based molecular structures – is not just occasional, it’s ubiquitous. Carbon is a fabulous player; simple molecules, rings, chains, polymers, sheets, crystals, and great clumps of sooty particles abound. Some is produced directly from the huge outflows of cooling gas from old stars, much forms in the thick nebulae and proto-stellar cocoons that eventually give rise to planets. Thousands of recognizable organic molecules, including amino acids, are found in the treacly mix of some meteorites – the remains of our own ancient solar system. This is a chemical bonanza that must have played a role in setting the stage on the young planet Earth. If this is blinkered then stick a blindfold on me.

So life on Earth is tough and tenacious, and the building blocks are everywhere. Is this enough reason to think that a similar blueprint exists in other places across the universe? Well, it’s definitely motivation to go looking, and to go looking for the kind of exotica that we already know, rather than inventing new ones. Is this reason enough to think that ‘intelligent’ life exists somewhere else? That’s a tough call. Life on Earth did remarkably well for the past 3.5 billion years without us around, I don’t think there is anything that indicates we are more than an evolutionary oddity (albeit an incredible one). It’s a big universe though, with plenty of room for oddities, even if they turn out to be extremely familiar.

Perhaps you've wished, while paging through a heavy textbook on evolutionary biology, that learning the subject could be a little more like an Eminem concert? If so, rush over to a New York theater where the rapper Baba Brinkman is ready to fill your brain with his one-man show, "The Rap Guide to Evolution."
The project began when Brinkman got a call from evolutionary biologist Mark Pallen, who asked him to compose a rap in honor of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. Says Brinkman: "All winter I sent him copies of my rap lyrics, and he came back with corrections, which means my hip-hop show is peer reviewed." Here's a segment of his show: Olivia Judson, who praised the show in The New York Times, says she suspects this is "the only hip-hop show to talk of mitochondria, genetic drift, sexual selection or memes." She continues:
[Brinkman] is a man on a mission to spread the word about evolution — how it works, what it means for our view of the world, and why it is something to be celebrated rather than feared. Brinkman is performing his show through Saturday, May 8th at the Bleeker Street Theatre in New York City. If you can't make it ...

This is amazing footage of shockwaves erupting a week or two ago from the volcano Eyjafjalajökull (which I believe is pronounced Gugliucci):

Amazing! There is a lot of gas trapped inside the rising magma under the volcano. When it gets near the surface, the gas can escape violently, exploding and creating shock waves. These waves travel through the smoke and ash already in the air, compressing them, and you can see this as a darkening in the plume. This volcano is still erupting and still causing massive screwups in air traffic over Europe. The last big eruption lasted for two years, so we may need to sit back and think about that for a while.

Tip o’ the lavabomb to Fark.

If the mere mention of an iPad sets your pulse raising and your heart thumping, if there's nothing you like better than gliding your fingers over the sleek screen of an iPhone, then you should know that there will soon be an online dating site just for people like you. A new site called Cupidtino promises to help Apple fans find each other, and find happy geek love.
The site will launch in June, but rabid Apple fans can sign up now to be included in the beta version, and can follow Cupidtino on Twitter.
Why start a dating site for such a narrow slice of humanity? According to the site:
Diehard Mac & Apple fans often have a lot in common – personalities, creative professions, a similar sense of style and aesthetics, taste, and of course a love for technology. We believe these are enough reasons for two people to meet and fall in love.
To mark this fine occasion, Flavorwire brainstormed some pickup lines that might work on a Cupidtino participant. A couple of our favorites:
“Is your daddy Steve Jobs? ‘Cause your case is lookin’ finer than a new MacBook Pro’s.”
“Baby, I’m all the AppleCare you’ll ever need.” Related Content:
Discoblog: Video: Google ...

ET-137 being loaded into Pegasus. Click for a larger version. Image credit: Lockheed Martin / Michoud Operations

The next to the last External Tank for the shuttle shown here being loaded into a barge after leaving at the Michoud Assembly Facility and bound for the Kennedy Space Center.

The External Tanks are way too large to be moved over the highway or rail systems so they are moved by an enclosed barge called the Pegasus.  The tank was actually loaded on the first of the month but high winds delayed the departure. The journey is about 900 miles and will take six days to accomplish.  The tank will arrive on May 9, 2010 and will be mated to the shuttle Atlantis for the scheduled May 14 launch date.

The final ET is being built and is scheduled to be completed next month.  Another tank called ET-122, damaged in Hurricane Katrina, is being constructed and it is a “spare launch on-need” tank.  These will mark the end the tank building activities for Lockheed Martin after building 133 tanks over 29 years.

There is a website for Michoud Operations with more (and larger) images and links to some pretty interesting PDF files.  One of the files, titled: Space Shuttle External Tank Statistics and Comparisons, I found to be especially interesting.

Here are some highlights:

• The tank is 154 feet (46.9 m) long with a diameter of 27.6 feet (27.8 m).
• The tank supplies propellant (liquid Oxygen and Hydrogen) at a rate of 1,035 gallons per second.
• The propellant temperature: Liquid Oxygen -297^oF (-183 C) / Liquid Hydrogen -423^oF (-253 C)
• The foam covering the tank is only about one inch thick (2.54 cm), yet it protects the super cold propellant insulated from the aerodynamic friction that can heat some parts of the tank to 1,800^oF (982 C)
• The aluminum skin of the tank is less than 0.5 inches (1.3 cm) thick.  Of course it’s a special alloy of aluminum and not like a soda can.
• The ratio of the tank weight to the weight it can carry is 1:27 compared to a “standard” pickup of 3:1.

So, I wonder what is to become of the employees at Michoud?  I wish them the best of luck.

See here. It is a good summary of last week's blogging conference, with commentary from sponsor Sheila Jasanoff, head of the science and technology studies program at the Kennedy School:
Throughout the day, panelists touched on topics including blogging as a business, the perks and pitfalls of the Web as a medium to distribute scientific information, what makes responsible blogging, how to handle false information spread through the blogosphere, and the norms and expectations of the science blogging community. The final panel explored the issue of “what needs fixing” in the blogosphere during which panelists discussed the responsibility and mechanisms by which the science journalism and law communities have to address these problems.
“It was interesting to see that speakers with law backgrounds were generally extremely reluctant to impose any controls on speech in the blogosphere, whereas some science writers felt that there was a need for stricter standards, and maybe even a system of independent ratings of the reliability of science blogs,” said Jasanoff. “Another interesting insight was that blogging under an assumed identity — ‘pseudonymous’ blogging — may allow socially valuable information to be conveyed that a blogger with a known identity might not risk communicating. This runs contrary to ...

The storm of news about the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has reached a relative lull today, as the oil company preps for its containment dome project that it will try to execute over the next several days. With a moment to take a break from the constant news updates, reports are starting to ask: What’s with all that chemical dispersant responders have been dumping on this spill?

The stuff is called Corexit, made by the Nalco Company, and BP has now dumped about 160,000 gallons of it in the Gulf (as well as pumping 6,000 gallons more all the way down to the leak location). The dispersant particles bind to oil, sink, and are carried away by ocean currents. But while that could help keep a spill from reaching the shores en masse, it means the oil isn’t actually “cleaned up,” but rather diluted. And the dispersant chemicals themselves can be dangerous, as Nalco’s own documents (pdf) show.

The 10-page documents go into detail about compounds that must be handled with great care in their original form, that should not touch the skin and can damage lungs. Although the documents state that the potential environmental hazard is “moderate,” they say that when used as directed at sea in the recommended amounts the potential environmental exposure is “low” [The New York Times].

The company says Corexit contains no toxic metals or carcinogens. But it has refused to divulge the full chemical composition, calling it proprietary information. That’s annoyed environment groups that want to know exact what we’re putting into the sea in such mass quantity. Still, with the number of options dwindling and oil continuing to gush into the Gulf, some of those groups have come to accept chemical dispersants as the lesser of two evils.

“It’s basically a giant experiment,” said Richard Charter, a senior policy adviser with Defenders of Wildlife. “I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it; we have no good options” [AP].

Another eyebrow-raiser is the choice of chemical. While the United States is familiar with Corexit from having used it previously, Wired.com reports that there are better alternatives on the market, like Dispersit.

Both Corexit and Dispersit were tested by the EPA, and according to those results, Corexit was 54.7 percent effective at breaking down crude oil from the Gulf, and Dispersit was 100 percent effective. Not only did Corexit do a worse job of dispersing oil, but it was three times as lethal to silverfish – used as a benchmark organism in toxicity testing — and more than twice as lethal to shrimp, another benchmark organism and an important part of Gulf fisheries [Wired.com].

Previous posts on the BP Oil Spill:
80beats: BP Will Tow a Containment Dome to the Oil Leak Site Today
80beats: Is the Gulf Oil Spill Headed for Florida & North Carolina?
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill: Fisheries Closed; Louisiana Wetlands Now in Jeopardy
80beats: Gulf Oil Spill Reaches U.S. Coast; New Orleans Reeks of “Pungent Fuel Smell”
80beats: Uh-Oh: Gulf Oil Spill May Be 5 Times Worse Than Previously Thought
80beats: Coast Guard’s New Plan To Contain Gulf Oil Spill: Light It on Fire
80beats: Sunken Oil Rig Now Leaking Crude; Robots Head to the Rescue
80beats: Ships Race To Contain the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

Image: U.S. Coast Guard / Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Kendrick

There have long been complaints that teaching gets relatively short shrift in academe--especially at major research universities--and that what everybody really values is research. Well, there's some new data out on the topic--a survey by Nature Education, reported on by Times Higher Education:
The analysis is based on a survey of 450 university scientists from more than 45 countries who have both undergraduate teaching and research responsibilities.
It states that while in theory most consider teaching to be as important as research, their actions suggest otherwise.
While 77 per cent say that teaching and research are equally important and only 7 per cent say that research takes precedence, when asked to select a candidate for a role involving both duties, 48 per cent chose a star researcher with no significant teaching experience.
The report says that the respondents believe that this is the appointment their institution would want them to make, adding that despite missions to educate, most top-level universities are "far more interested" in pursuing a research than a teaching agenda.
It notes that such institutions tend to "direct more funding, awards and job security to outstanding researchers than outstanding teachers". You can read the full report on the Nature Education study here. My take: We ...

The Japanese mission Hayabusa ("Falcon") has been nothing if not ambitious. Launched in 2004, it reached the bizarre asteroid Itokawa a little over a year later. It took phenomenal images and other measurements, and even landed on the asteroid itself to take samples, destined to be returned to Earth.

But it has suffered a series of crippling mishaps that have threatened the mission time and again with failure. However, despite all that, the end game is in sight: Hayabusa is almost back home, and on June 13, sometime around 14:00 UT, the sample recovery capsule will parachute down to the Earth.

This is an unprecedented opportunity for scientists! While meteorites that fall to Earth give us samples of asteroids, this will be the first time we’ll have obtained one that has not been through the perils of atmospheric re-entry directly. Also, Itokawa is just plain weird. As you can see in the picture, it’s covered in rubble, and lacks impact craters! This is strong evidence that it’s not a single, monolithic body; in other words, it’s not a solid rock. It may instead be more like a pile of rubble, an asteroid that has been shattered repeatedly by low-speed impacts with other rocks, but had its own gravity hold it together like a bag full of shattered glass.

Asteroids like this may comprise a significant percentage of all the asteroids we see. And if one of them is headed toward Earth, how we deal with a rubble pile may be very different than how we might try to push a solid rock out of the way. Studying Itokawa is therefore very important… and may just save the world.

The sample return capsule will land in Woomera, Australia, where it hopefully will not be attacked by venomous Koalas (everything Down Under can kill you). I just learned that my old friend and editor J. Kelly Beatty will be there to watch it come back! He’s doing it as part of the high school at which he teaches; go read his remarkable story to learn more.

And expect to hear a lot more about this in the coming weeks, too. It will take a long time to study and understand the actual samples returned, but in the meantime the re-entry itself is very exciting, and hopefully we’ll get cool video of it too.

Tip o’ the Whipple Shield to Mike Murray.

Drawing credit: Corby Waste and Tommy Thompson for NASA / JPL. Image of Itokawa credit: JAXA

This article is reposted from the old WordPress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.

The best communicators know to cater to their audiences, and cuttlefish are no different. A new study shows that these intelligent invertebrates can target their defensive signals to the hunting styles of different predators.

Cuttlefish and their relatives, the octopuses and squid, are expert communicators whose incredible skins can produce a massive range of colours and patterns. Cuttlefish mostly use these abilities to blend into the background but they can also startle and intimidate predators by rapidly changing the display on their dynamic skins.

Keri Langridge and colleagues from the University of Sussex, watched young cuttlefish as they were threatened by three very different predators – juvenile seabass, dogfish (a type of shark) and crabs. A glass partition protected the cuttlefish from any actual harm but gave them full view of the incoming threats.

She found that the cuttlefish only ever used startling visual displays when they were faced by seabass, which hunt by sight. As the fish approached, the young cuttlefish suddenly flattened their bodies to make themselves look bigger and flashed two dark eye-spots on their backs to startle the predator. This pattern is called a ‘deimatic display’ and it was used in 92% of encounters with seabass.

In contrast, Langridge found that the cuttlefish never presented the deimatic display, or any other type of visual signals, to dogfish and crabs in any of 72 trials. And for good reason – neither predator hunts by sight. Crabs sense chemicals in the water, while dogfish (like all sharks) track their prey through the electricity generated by their own bodies.

To these hunters, the cuttlefish’s dynamic skin is all but useless, and it would be foolish to waste time in bluffing with visual signals. That would just allow the predator to draw closer and might even attract the attention of other threats. Better then to immediately flee, which is what the young cuttlefish did.

Langridge found that young cuttlefish go through a similar series of threat displays for all three predators. They break their camouflage by first intensifying their colours and then turning uniformly dark. They then either used the deimatic display or fled immediately, depending on the species of predator.

The study begs the question: how do the cuttlefish tell the difference between the different predators? Even though the trained biologist’s eye could tell apart a dogfish and a seabass, they are superficially very similar. The remarkable consistency of the cuttlefishes’ responses suggests that they have access to clear clues that allow them to quickly and accurately distinguish between these groups.

Many of other cases of predator-specific signals come from the world of back-boned animals and I blogged about one such example earlier this year. Ground squirrels pump hot blood into their tails to make themselves look bigger in front of rattlesnakes, which hunt with by tracking body heat. However, they didn’t bother with hot tails when faced with gopher snakes, which lack heat-sensitive pits.

Langridge’s study is further evidence that the intelligence of cuttlefish and their kin is a match for many back-boned animals. Indeed, one of the cuttlefish’s relatives, the mimic octopus, also uses targeted defences. It changes both shape and colour to mimic a large variety of toxic marine animals and it tends to reserve its sea snake disguise when pestered damselfish, which sea snakes eat.

References: Langridge, K.V., Broom, M., Osorio, D. (2007). Selective signalling by cuttlefish to predators. . Current Biology, 17(24), R1044-R1045.

Asteroids; the ultimate villain.  If they’re big enough (and many are), they are capable of destroying all life on Earth in a single event.  Many doomsday scenarios making their viral way around the Web prominently feature asteroids to play on this fear.  We know it’s happened before, and we know the odds are good it will happen again.

I wrote a post not too long ago called “Chicken Little Was Right” (you can look it over here if you’re interested) which talks about chunks of real estate bombarding Earth.  That’s definitely a concern when talking about asteroids, but today I want to talk about asteroids that aren’t falling to Earth destroying civilization.

Image released to Public Domain - Distribution of asteroids in the inner solar system

An asteroid is a small body orbiting the Sun; smaller than a planet but larger than a meteoroid.  They are closely related to comets, the main difference being asteroids do not have a coma, and comets do.  Comets are believed to come mostly from the Oort Cloud, while asteroids are mostly concentrated further inward; being somewhat rare beyond the Scattered Disc.

NASA/JPL artist's conception of the Dawn Mission probe with Vesta (left) and Ceres (right)

When talking about asteroids, the first thing that comes to mind for most people is the Asteroid Belt.  When I was growing up, it was still common belief that the asteroids where remnants of a planet that once orbited between Mars and Jupiter.  Now, of course, we know there never was a planet in that space; Jupiter became large enough to disrupt the accretion process.  We did get a few good-sized bodies in the Belt:  Ceres,  3 Juno, 4 Vesta, 5 Astraea, 2 Pallas, and 10 Hygiea.  Ceres, in fact, is large enough to be classed as a Dwarf Planet.  The asteroid Ida, while not large enough to be a dwarf planet, is large enough to have her own little moon.  While Ida was the first asteroid found to have a little moon, many more have since been discovered.

NASA/JPL Galileo approach to Ida 02/1996

When asteroids get pulverized into dust, we get to see Zodiacal light.  This eerie, beautiful phenomenon is caused by sunlight reflecting off the dust.

Image: Mila Zinkova - Orionid Meteor Shower showing Zodiacal green and red light at bottom of image

There’s a lot to be said about asteroids, and the more we know about them, the more interesting they become.

And of course, one day an asteroid is going to come crashing into Earth and destroy most (if not all) life on the planet.

Meteor Crater in Arizona - Image PD US Gov

Radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55. Image credit: NASA/Cornell/Arecibo

Kind of following up Marian’s post about asteroids, scientists at JPL have “imaged” the near-earth asteroid 2005 YU55 using the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico back on April 19, 2010.

Orbital track of 2005 YU55. Courtesy JPL

The asteroid at one time was listed as a potential threat because its orbital path brings it very close to Earth on occasion, a few passes of which could not be ruled out for possibility of impact.  It takes a number of observations to be able to predict an orbit.  It follows that the predictions can only be as accurate as the observed position.  You can appreciate when looking through a telescope how difficult it can be to get a very precise position.  Sure you can get very close but even a small error can add up over a long distance.

With the Arecibo Radar Telescope the scientists were able to track the asteroid with very fine accuracy.  The image above was take on April 19, 2010 and while described as ghostly (which it is) the resolution is 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel, not bad for an object 1,300 feet (400 meters) across.  The asteroid also appears spherical in shape.  By tracking the asteroid from April 19th to the 21st , scientists were able to reduce the uncertainties in the orbit by half and we know there no chance of a collision for at least 100 years.  More observations will enable longer term predictions.

Source

UPDATE:  SOLVED by Sean at 12:26 CDT

Ah, Saturday!  Are you ready to be amazed and amused?  Or are you just bored and paging through your bookmarked websites?  Either way, wake up those brain cells!

It’s time to run down the riddle rules again, for those of you just entering the fray.  The riddle answer can be an object or an event, but you will always be told which one you’re looking for.  The answer will be something well-known; something you grew up with; and something related to astronomy (always!).  You post your guesses in the comment section, where I am lurking.  The riddle posts every Saturday at noon CDT.  The winner becomes eligible to participate in the bonus riddle, and also gets to choose the subject of my next post (must be researchable, must be about astronomy), usually published the following Monday.

And now, for the clues:

The answer today is referred to as one “thing”, but it is composed of many parts.

It is known the world over.

Our ancestors knew it.

It is very well represented in ancient texts; among other writings it’s mentioned in the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Odes, the Aeneid, and the Bible.

It makes its way into modern fiction, also.

Parts of today’s subject are better known than others.  It would be fair to say that portions of it are recognized by almost everyone on Earth, while other portions are bordering on being completely unknown.

It is a well-known reference point.

One portion of today’s object is a beautiful time-bomb – that may have already detonated.

It is associated with an asterism which also has ancient and modern references.

You probably think of today’s object every year around October.

That should do it.  I’m waiting in the comment section… lurking… creeping quietly about…

BOO!  Ha ha!  Scared ya’, didn’t I?

A Spider Picture Just For Trudy

For my next show, I'm going to be interviewing Rice University sociologist Elaine Ecklund about her new book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think. After merely mentioning this book's existence drew over 180 comments on the blog recently, I get the feeling that really digesting Ecklund's findings will make for quite a show. It is worth noting that this will be the first time a Point of Inquiry show that I've done has gotten into the hotly contested subject of science and religion. My own views on this topic are widely known, have been widely aired and debated, and also sometimes criticized. See, e.g., my POI episode with D.J. Grothe about Unscientific America. In that show I was the guest; but now I'm in the host's shoes at Point of Inquiry, and my goals and responsibilities are very different. Rather than advancing a particular view, my objective will be to include a diversity of voices on science and religion--starting with Ecklund, but extending to include a range of perspectives as I do more shows in the future. That includes interviewing “New Atheists” like Vic Stenger and others. With that said, then, I'm encouraging folks to submit questions for Dr. Ecklund, either here ...

OMFSM! How did I miss this? The wonderful skeptic Ariane Sherine sings a song of Simon Singh:

Ha! That was brilliant. And her point is a good one: go support libel reform in the UK! Even though the BCA dropped its suit^* against Simon, the libel law evilness lives on.

If Ariane looks familiar, that because she was a speaker at TAM London, and I did a short interview with her there too. I had no idea she could play guitar and sing! I think she’ll have to join George Hrab and Tim Minchin onstage at some point.

Tip o’ the subluxated spine to Neil Haggath.

[Please check the bottom of this post for a related issue...]

I know, it’s Caturday, but I’ve expanded the concept — it’s my blog, y’know — to include all animals that I want it to. So here’s a pair of cuties for you:

Click to enhootenate.

These owlets — actually, Great Horned Owlets — are nested in a hollow stump about 5 meters off the ground along a creek not too far from my house. My wife heard about them, and we told her brother Chris, and he ran down there to get this and some other great pictures of them.

Mama and Papa Owl are usually nearby, in another tree, keeping watch. I was down there last week to see, and also spotted a hawk, a muskrat… and this guy:

That’s a Great Blue Heron — a lot of birds around here are Great — and I saw it standing in a lake not far from the creek and the owl. As I watched, the heron suddenly stuck its head into the water and came up with that fish (anyone know what kind that is?). That’s a pretty good meal! I noticed another heron a bit farther away, and I wonder if they’re mates. A little while later I saw one of them flying around, and in the air they are simply amazing. Graceful and huge, and I stood there and gawked at it.

All in all, that was a nice day to be out walking. Boulder in the spring is lovely (even if it snowed the other day; it melted in an hour or two though), and I have to remember to take some time to walk away from this accursed computer/internet/web thingy and actually breathe in some real life. There’s a lot of life out there.

[Note: John Billingsley, the actor who played Dr. Phlox in "Enterprise", sent me a note (!!) that he and several other Star Trek actors (Armin Shimerman, Robert Picardo, and Ethan Phillips) will be celebrating the LA Audubon Society's 100th anniversary with an afternoon picnic and birdwatch on May 9th. The first 30 people to sign up to help will join them in this fun afternoon... it's $150 per person and proceeds go to the society. Call Martha at 1-888-522-7428 or send an email to books "at" laaudobon "dot"org for details.]

A carpet python, photographed at Perth Zoo. From this angle, you can clearly see the heat-seeking pits on the lower jaw. The python uses these to detect the body heat of its warm-blooded prey.

A few quick points on the post below. When it comes to some of the natural science related posts on this weblog I put a lot of effort quite often into them. On the other hand, when I present some quantitative social science data, it’s all preliminary and exploratory. I stopped presenting regressions a while back because it took too much time to do it right, since it’s so easy to manipulate the variables into the appropriate configuration of p-value significance, even unconsciously. I provide the link to the GSS and the variables in the hope that others with some time on their hands will follow up. Together we can aggregate into a lot of labor input, if we so choose.

Now, in terms of controls for the results below, I did look into that, and I came to the conclusion (supported by some logits I ran) that the biggest influence on the patterns is BIBLE. This is the question from the GSS:

Which of these statements comes closest to describing your feelings about teh Bible?

1. The Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word.

2. The Bible is the inspired word of God but not everything in it should be taken literally, word for word.

3. The Bible is an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts recorded by men.

In other words, the variable is an index of Protestant Fundamentalism. As you can see below, separating out this category into its classes reduces a lot of the variance. A few notes. SEI = “socioeconomix index.” It runs from 17 to 97, and I combined it into three categories. On Wordsum I also combined at the extremes, since the N was small there. I also took the Census Divisions and combined them so that all the Southern regions are together, and so forth. Here’s what I input into the GSS browser:

Row: drink

Column: region(r:1-2″Northeast”;3-4″Midwest”;5-7″South”;8-9″West”) wordsum(r:0-3;4;5;6;7;8;9-10) degree region sex sei(r:17-30″Low SEI”;30.1-70″Middle SEI”;70.1-98″High SEI”)

As for the title, I don’t really get it. Does the Bible really place a ban on alcohol? I thought on the contrary, even taking into account Noah’s lapse into drunkenness. Instead I’m pointing here to the importance of cultural evolution in shaping norms. You can’t just necessarily take a Fundamentalist Christian who claims that the Bible is the Word of God, and therefore to be followed, at his word, so to speak. I’m sure that some of the books that John Emerson highlighted below will explain the regional variations, though most are probably aware of the nationwide temperance movements which swept the United States in the 19th century, with the locus of energy being amongst those who we would later term Evangelical Protestants.

Ivanka writes,

I got this last week and as I’m sure you know, it’s the second law of thermodynamics (the original equation, by Clausius) before -N even represented entropy. This is a strange story, because I’m not a physics or math major, I’m a female philosophy person.

I really do love physics though, and I’m about to leave my home country and all my undergrad friends behind and go and do my MSc at LSE. So the sentiment behind this is that now, after undergrad, we begin to disseminate. Entropy.

It’s also a great boyfriend filtration system:

‘Can I have your number?’

‘Wait, what’s this mean?’

‘Um… I don’t know?’

‘Too bad, you were cute’ (walk off)

Click here to go to the full Science Tattoo Emporium.